Slovakia said on Friday it would send its interior minister and police chief to talk to police in Berlin following media reports that a Slovak
state plane was used in the kidnap in Germany of a Vietnamese oil executive who
was then spirited back to Vietnam, Reuters reports.

The Most-Hid party, a junior
member of three-party center-left ruling coalition, has called for a
parliamentary committee to investigate the case after a Slovak media outlet
reported a Slovak state plane was used in the abduction.

Trinh Xuan Thanh, accused of
causing losses and mismanagement at PetroVietnam Construction JSC amid a
government anti-corruption drive, had sought asylum in Germany, where he was
abducted from a Berlin street last year and smuggled back to Vietnam. He was
subsequently tried and jailed for life.

Prime Minister Peter
Pellegrini said he would send Interior Minister Denisa Sakova and police chief
Milan Lucansky to Germany to cooperate with Berlin police on the case.

The case soured relations
between Germany and Vietnam and prompted Germany to accuse Vietnam of breaching
international law. Slovakia has sought to distance itself from the incident
after previous reports its plane was used in the kidnap.

On Thursday Slovak daily Dennik N cited
several Slovak police officers as confirming Thanh was smuggled to Vietnam on a
Slovak government plane.

The witnesses, only identified by first names,
said then-interior minister Robert Kalinak had arranged for a government plane
to pick up a Vietnamese delegation in Prague and bring them to Bratislava for a
meeting involving Vietnam’s minister of public security, To Lam.

The abducted and beaten man was allegedly
transferred from a rented van to a car that was part of the official motorcade
and was driven to Bratislava airport, the daily reported.

The delegation then flew to Moscow from
Bratislava, Dennik N reported. Thanh subsequently surfaced in Vietnam.

Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported in May
that, three days after the abduction, the car supposedly used for the kidnap
was parked in front of the Slovak government hotel where the Slovak-Vietnamese
meeting was held, according to GPS records.

Kalinak on Friday denied any involvement in
the kidnapping and called the story “science-fiction.”